Chancellor's Parashah Commentary

If the first half of this week's double parasha reminds you of Yom Kippur,
despite our proximity to Passover, you are not in error. The two Torah
readings for that solemn day are both drawn from Aharei Mot.
Chapter 16, which we read at Shaharit on Yom Kippur morning,
depicts the annual ceremony on the tenth day of the seventh month for
cleansing the tabernacle of its impurities and the people of their sins.
The English word "scapegoat" preserves a verbal relic of the day's most
memorable feature - the goat destined to carry off symbolically the collective
guilt of the nation into the wilderness. Chapter 18, reserved for Minhah
in the afternoon, defines the sexual practices which were to govern the
domestic life of Israelite society.

The interlocking of synagogue and Scripture, of liturgy and Bible, is
pervasive in Judaism. It attests to the manner in which a verbal form
of worship unfolded to fill the vacuum created by the abrupt end of the
temple sacrificial system in 70 C.E. The Bible, canonized gradually during
the preceding centuries, provided the words for the petitions and praises,
the affirmations of faith and study texts that became the fabric of Jewish
liturgy. Largely the formal recitation of Scripture in public - Psalms
from the Psalter, the three paragraphs of the Shema from the books of
Deuteronomy and Numbers, the Torah in its entirety, selections from the
prophets and all of the five scrolls (Song of Songs, Ruth, etc.), synagogue
worship not only rested squarely on the biblical canon, but also served
as its main medium of dissemination. In a moment of spiritual crisis,
Judaism forged the synagogue, a setting of unique synergy in which Scripture
yielded the language of prayer even as prayer deepened the knowledge of
and attachment to Scripture.

The two chapters taken from Aharei Mot into the Yom Kippur liturgy
signify something else as well: the twofold nature of Judaism's behavioral
system. What is it that we believe God wants of us? We tend, at first
blush, to think of mitzvot only in terms of positive and negative injunctions.
But the readings for Yom Kippur sensitize us to a deeper classification.
Absorbed with matters of purity and ritual, chapter 16 treats of the relationship
between God and the community, including the individual. Impurities threaten
to render the divine inaccessible. So, once a year the pristine holiness
of the sanctuary must be restored.

In contrast, chapter 18 treats of the manner in which human beings ought
to relate to each other. If every person in the household is fair game
for sexual conquest, if every form of sexual experimentation is within
bounds, then neither the family nor society will long endure. Sexual restraint
generates cohesion, intensifying the relationships that are countenanced.
Religion must comprise morality as well as theology if it is to enhance
the social compact. Ancient Israel was to distance itself from Egypt,
not only geographically, but also spiritually, in its patterns of living
no less than in its conception of God.

Thus the Yom Kippur liturgy appropriates both chapters 16 and 18 in order
to stress the totality of Judaism as a system of belief and practice,
of ritual and morality. The balance between the two is what counts. One
must not be allowed to overwhelm the other. An exclusive concern with
one's personal relationship to God is but another expression of ego-centrism,
while conversely, a morality ungrounded in ultimate concerns is susceptible
to easy disposal. By way of example, the Mishnah points out that if the
decadent citizens of Nineveh had responded to the prophetic rebuke of
Jonah merely with fasting and sackcloth, the city would never have been
spared. The biblical text, however, underscores that God took special
note of their corresponding actions, the radical change in their treatment
of each other. Reading the book of Jonah for Minhah on Yom Kippur strips
us of the illusion that repairing our ties with God is enough.

Indeed, nothing is more disconcerting than to see how a preoccupation
with ritual can subvert morality. The Rabbis were not unmindful of the
danger and recorded a chilling story as admonition. A number of daily
Temple duties were regularly assigned to priests in advance through a
form of lottery. One such duty was removing the ashes from the altar on
which the daily sacrifice for the entire community was offered - morning
and afternoon. At first, however, this task was awarded only to volunteers,
and if many stepped forward, they would compete by racing up the long,
inclined plane leading to the altar, with honors going to the winner.

On one occasion, two priests were about to finish in a dead heat, when
one of them pulled out a knife and stabbed the other. A revered sage who
had witnessed the travesty rose to commiserate with those assembled, though
his words evinced greater concern for the desecration of the holy space
than for the loss of life. Suddenly, the father of the young priest appeared
and rebuked the sage: "My son's death will atone for the sacrilege. But
he is not dead yet. He continues to writhe before you and the knife is
still not defiled. Yet, all you worry about is pollution, neither (trying
to save him, nor) condemning his assailant." Murder had been reduced to
a matter of ritual impurity!

The preservation of this moral tale reflects a religious culture capable
of self-correction. It harbors voices of protest for times of imbalance.
For Judaism, with all its attention to obligations to God, ritual remains
the means; morality is the end, though, to be effective they need to work
in tandem. The way to the Golden Rule leads over the bridge to God. How
striking that the sins for which we atone on Yom Kippur in the al
heit confessional are primarily acts of immorality, offenses against
other people!

The Midrash echoes the same priority scale. "We are not to make the fence
more important that the saplings it protects, lest it fall and damage
them." How do we know this principle? From the error of Eve. When the
serpent tried to ensnare her with a question that cunningly distorted
the truth - "Did God really say: You shall not eat of any tree of the
garden?" (Genesis 3:1) she countered with a distortion of her own that
led to her downfall: "We may eat of the fruit of the other trees of the
garden. It is only about fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden
that God said: You shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die (Genesis
3:2)."

But God had said nothing about touching (Genesis 2:17). Eve had expanded
the scope of the prohibition giving the serpent his chance. Later, when
she passed by the tree the serpent pushed her into the fruit without harm,
whereupon, he said: "Look, you did not die touching it, you will not die
eating it."

As the walls of separation between Jew and Jew in Israel and America
rise ever-higher, we must not tire of reaffirming the basic temperateness
of traditional Judaism. Excessive religious zeal that obliterates the
distinction between ritual and morality, between our duties to God and
our duties to each other, only exacerbates the losses brought on by assimilation.